Medicinal plants are used globally and are known by different names in different communities, health traditions, generations and languages. The same name can also be applied to different species. So in order to find all information published about a particular plant, and to ensure that you are sharing data about the same species, you need to know all the possible names that have been used, and any possible confusions.

Organisations and individuals often use different names for the same plant. Professionals working in the health and research sectors, for example, as well as those in the herbal or pharmaceutical industries, all need to access information about plants and to communicate accurately and effectively about them.

What we offer

An online portal provides access to medicinal plant data and medical citations using any pharmaceutical, drug, common or scientific plant name.

Validation We can validate, update and enrich your list(s) of plant names. We'll also correct spellings, detect ambiguities and duplication, provide a consistent modern plant taxonomy. Your dataset can be enriched with all known synonyms for each plant and we can embed persistent digital identifiers to facilitate data maintenance and future updates.

Harmonisation This involves, for example, mapping your list of plants onto lists used by other organisations or that are published in legislation. In addition, we can validate both lists, detect gaps and overlaps ensuring a coherent single list and reliable data exchange despite the use of different names in the multiple lists.

Data We can supply subsets of MPNS data tailored for use for your own database.

Web updates We offer a service for regularly refreshing plant names data.

Consultancy Contact us for expert advice on the use and interpretation of medicinal plant names, on devising workflows to capture and store scientific plant names appropriately and on how to design database structures to manage scientific plant and herbal drug names appropriately.

Training We provide specialist best-practice training for people working with medicinal plants or building medicinal plant databases to promote safe efficient working practices and advice re: best practice, workflows and systems design. Find out more about our workshop Use of Scientific Plant Names for Herbal Products.

This will enable you to find, for example: the currently accepted scientific name for a plant, all of its synonyms and its plant family, the medicinal references which cite this plant and the various (and conflicting) names employed for them which parts of that plant have been used medicinally and in what form.

The taxonomy is refreshed regularly to reflect continual improvement of Kew’s global reference resources as they are extended and curated to reflect changes made in recent taxonomic literature.